Warda H., the student from the Sévigné high school in Tourcoing accused of having slapped a teacher who had asked her to remove her Islamic veil, was on trial this Wednesday before the Lille judicial court. Aged 18, the young girl had to answer for “violence and death threats against a person responsible for a public service mission”.
Two months after the events, interest in this case has not died down if we are to believe the packed courtroom and the presence of numerous media several minutes before the start of the hearing. An interest that the defense lawyer denounces on the one hand, and that the victim intends to exploit on the other.
“Society fact” or “normal business”
For Maître Eric Cattelin-Denu, the teacher's lawyer, the root of the problem is indeed the non-respect of secularism by a defendant whom he describes as a “little dictator” trying to establish “the beginning of a little caliphate “. If he denies playing politics at the bar, the one who was RN candidate in the 2020 municipal elections in Lille, insists that “it is a fact of society that we judge” in a “society full of attacks to authority” which “loses its identity and its values”. And to compare this case to the assassinations of Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, ordering the president of the court to pronounce an “exemplary sentence” to “protect others in the face of rising and conquering Islamism”.
Opposite, Ossama Dahmane, lawyer for Warda H., believes on the contrary that this “very simple case” should be judged as a “normal matter”. For him, “secularism was not respected for 45 seconds” and it is “caricatural and excessive” to judge his client “as if she were responsible for all the ills of society”. He admits that the only things that can be blamed on the defendant are the regrettable violence against the teacher, even if he disputes the slap and the death threats.
At the hearing, no one disputed that the defendant actually removed her veil when the teacher asked her to do so. Certainly, the injunction irritated her, letting her escape with a “that’s annoying”. Everyone also agrees that things got out of hand because the young girl refused to stay in the school and reveal her identity to the teacher. It is on what follows that points of view diverge, with the student denying having slapped the victim. Except that the high school's video surveillance, broadcast at the hearing, shows the opposite. “If you don’t see the same thing on the video, it’s because you’re seeing it wrong,” the prosecutor says to Warda H.
A sentence beyond the requisitions
Bad faith that the victim cannot digest. With a quavering voice, the teacher fulminates: “She victimizes herself and lies to the point of denying her slap while I was being made to appear as an Islamophobe and I am on pills to go to work.” And faced with the teacher's dismay, Warda H. does not flinch. “Doesn’t that make you feel hot or cold?” », asks the president. “I have nothing to say about things I didn’t do,” she replies laconically.
Regarding secularism in schools, the prosecutor recalls in her indictment that the “law applies to everyone”, “whether we understand it or not”. However, she remains measured in her requisitions and demands 140 hours of community service as a penalty.
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Except that the court will go much further in its decision. Finding Warda H guilty of all the acts with which she was accused, the president pronounced Warda H. a four-month prison sentence with suspended probation and the obligation to complete a citizenship course. “It’s a message of support for teachers and a warning for those who would like to attack teachers,” welcomes Master Cattelin-Denu. For his part, Master Dahmane denounces “a court which wanted to split the pear in two to justify a disproportionate procedure”.
